


Lux Aeterna

by graspthesanity



Category: Arctic Monkeys, Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-02-29 12:07:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18777955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graspthesanity/pseuds/graspthesanity
Summary: There's a thin veil between death and insanity, which Alex keeps crossing over while remeniscing his relationships with Alexa and Miles, hooking up with truckers on the way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Circle.

Solitude. 

I light up a cigarette, knowing well all the lies I’ve spread on each and every card when I introduce myself. I see Alexa running around, packing the last things still, she’s on my mind with her thin frame. 

A flicker of the lighter right next to my eye so that it could burn my lashes if it could and I close my eyes. 

I know how it felt to be inside Miles, to muffle his scream with my own and all the desires stripped to the bone, lust consuming every body in the room, as if it were some crucifixion. 

“I’m gay”, Miles had told me, body trembling as I was about to depart, right in tune with Alexa’s humming in my head. I didn’t know what to say after all the fucking we had done. I needed to be alone. I wish I had held him. I told him that over the payphone just now, wondering why we had stopped in the middle of nowhere. I was supposed to finish driving about an hour and a half ago, instead I sat next to the payphone, waiting, coughing from the dry air. 

I was someone who was admired. Some young-looking British man with longish air. Eventually a trucker passed me on his way to his truck. I kept smoking the cigarette and he came back to me, asking for a second cigarette. 

“I only have one.” I smirked, neck out and handing the larger man, a bear, the fag. His dark eyes focused on my own as he blew smoke in my face, a hand above my head. 

“You look like a prince.”

“I can be.” I smirk and lean to his ear. “Just bend me over and I’ll be screaming what the court had told me not to on my trial for sodomy.” 

The trucker turned his cap backwards and invited me into his blue truck, filled with tuna and sardine cans, as I had learned on the brief walk. He opened the back doors, showing a mattress and I allowed myself in, unhooking my belt, quickly removing my pants and going on fours. 

He yanked my hair backwards, exposing my neck for him to choke with the other hand. I gulp and he slams it in raw. I gasp, feeling my tight ass spreading, getting drilled by an unknown gay trucker. He didn’t pause for a second and kept pounding me, pulling my hair so hard that I had to bite my lips to blood, my cock rock hard. Then he inserted two more fingers up my ass with his cock, spreading my hole. My nails against the floor, my neck chocked and then I came, a web of my cum on the floor once the shaking orgasm was gone. 

He pulls out of me, pushes me on the floor and positions me on my knees, as I open my mouth like an obedient boy. 

“Open wide, prince.” He presses the cock against my mouth, I open it with my tongue out, feeling my ass ache. Then he pushes his wide cock into my throat and cums, holding my head tight as I try to push him off, I’m gagging but I relax and swallow. 

I cough as he’s done with me and I look at his poorly dyed curly hair and I collapse on the floor, looking as if the cans would be on the ceiling too, but instead they’re just reaching the ceiling. I stand up, we both do, and hastily kiss. Neither of us invite the other. I see the name Matt on his shirt. 

“Matt?” I echo silently and he nods. I cross my arms, naked from the bottom half and he looks at me in a bit of an awe, as if I really were a prince. 

“The fuck you doing here, kiddo. Lost?” I shrug and sit back down, bare ass on the floor.

“I want to be lost.” I sigh and he sits besides me, tucking his cock back behind his zipper. 

“But you’re not”, he says, and I guess we both regret not being able to smoke inside the truck. I still feel a bit horny, having avoided regular scheduled times with Alexa or rather tried them, but they were just filling the need rather than the mark and the excitement. I didn’t know what the fuck did I want, I wanted Miles yet here I was confused. 

I should’ve called him from the payphone instead of fucking a stranger. I knew what had to be done, I looked at my hands, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t tell him that I loved him back, that I was okay. 

I didn’t expect any of this. I didn’t expect Miles to know who he was, finally blurting it out on our last day of our trip together. Something we had always wanted to do since we were kids. I haven’t called him since we went back to our own homes. We lived in different cities now and I wondered if I was just becoming an angel to him, an idolized version of myself. 

“Matt…” I start, and he looks at me like the prince he thinks I am with my long wavy hair. He gets a strand and pulls it jokingly, as if letting me know that he’s here. 

“When did you know?”

“Probably when my wife didn’t.” He smirks. Then he stretches out his left hand and I see how he got a tan and the place where a ring should be is a faint white line instead. He got recently divorced by the looks of it. “I loved her, but it was never enough, I could feel it was never enough… Then I told her that every time I drive, I find guys and I can’t help but hold to have a better sexual time than we will ever have.” 

“But why is it different?” I asked softly, curious, as if it were a question first thing in the morning, when the mind still hasn’t woken up and the subconsciousness flourishes. 

“Dunno. You tell me. Maybe because it’s rougher, the dynamics… I don’t know.” He sits on the floor, legs a bit spread and looks at the ceiling as if it had stars, even fake glow in the dark ones. “I really like fucking rough… I guess my wife didn’t like it so much. I don’t know.”

Matt shrugs and I don’t dare to put my head on his shoulder. I want to fuck again and there’s something in the air, but I keep that to myself. Instead we both double check if we are dressed and head out. We didn’t even hold for the motel, which we are politely told about at the gas station. Matt makes a face, hiding poorly, since he did know and we both exit the gas station, with our tanks full. I politely excuse myself, drop a kiss on his lips, wondering if I should’ve been fucked again, but instead I get back into my car, as he keeps watching me, chewing gum he had just bought. 

I drive to a place where the road has no more houses, no more gas stations and turn off the engine, sitting down and leaning the chair backwards as much as I can. I masturbate, spreading my legs and pumping my cock harshly, as if I hadn’t had sex in a while. Only when I lick the cum off my fingers I’m satisfied.   
I should get going. 

When I arrive at my friend’s house, I am greeted with a foreign feeling all of a sudden. Jamie and Nick who live next door with wives and kids seem worlds apart. They ask me when I will knock Alexa up and I shudder at the possibility. I didn’t even make love to her, so they just keep on talking how the sex gets more frequent because then they’re both on the same wavelength and then you just erupt from joy from seeing what you’ve both harvested from love. 

I feel awkward hearing it all, but I listen. After that, I ask for their phone, which is in the living room of Nick’s and I dial Miles, as they both laugh at their own jokes.   
I close my eyes, push my hair back and breathe.

Miles doesn’t pick up. I call again. 

Eventually I am shown to my bed and I sit on it for a long while, excusing myself to have dinner alone, which isn’t very polite of me. I end up falling asleep, the trucker’s cum still inside me and soiling my underwear. I dream so much that I feel that I could crack my skull open and see all the colours spilling onto the surgeon’s fingers as if all the textbook definitions with different brain area colours were real. Maybe you could see the stars. 

I dream that I am the Mad Hatter and I’m running around, pouring tea to invisible guests and that’s when Alexa is sitting on the other end of the table and I get very excited to see her. My pants get tight and she looks older, skinnier and her arms can be dragged like chalk on the blackboard and they wouldn’t even scratch. She scares me a bit, because I knew of her modelling struggles of all the backlash, but it was what was beneath her that I loved. 

Why was I now thinking of a woman?

I didn’t know why it was so hard to accept loving two different beings at my own different pace and fucking a trucker once on the side. 

‘How many loves have I failed? How fast is it to forget about me?’ And she props her cheeks against her hands, in a spoiled way, looking up where the balloons make the clouds and I watch her, as if it’s a window to the future where we have dissolved. Maybe we’re already dead. I sit on the table, pushing all the teacups which dance away, pushing my top hat onto my eyes and she climbs on top of me. 

I can only see a bit, the lower half, as she lifts her dress, exposing herself to a mere thong which she pulls to one side, undoes my zipper and I enter her, sighing from relief from her wet walls. 

If I change, no one would love me. 

My hair once I wake up feels like a treasure and I am tucked into the bed. I step outside into the night, throwing the car keys up. I should be with my friends, but instead I decide to walk to the nearest convenience store which is filled to the brim with liquor and I consider standing on the corner to the bathroom, blowing bubble gum until some dom top sees me and bends me over, ejaculating and consuming me as if I were his own for more than the glimpse of the night. 

I count the stars, wondering if I should get a top hat and if I should try calling Alexa now. I don’t call, instead I stand on the corner of the store, chewing gum and wondering if I should’ve opted for a cigarette instead. It starts raining and I slowly make my way back, just the way I came in. I tuck myself back in, squirm, change sides, put the pillow on the other end of the bed and fall asleep, feeling the top hat being placed on me again, Alexa’s hands on me, pushing me further, while our hips are close and we’re having sex on a carousel.

Round and round.

I couldn’t understand my desires on the receiver’s end. 

I want to write about the woman I loved. The woman I’ve betrayed by locking lips with another man, feeling myself drown slowly, wrapping legs together, like we once had with her, but now I found the company of men more pleasant, simpler. I keep scribbling notes while chewing bubble gum on the wrapper which make no sense, near the convenience store. I’m looking for a short fuck while I think of Alexa. 

My feet got tired and turned back, the chewing gum having no more flavour now and becoming stale. It’s not like I didn’t want to have sex with men anymore, I could still feel Matt the driver vividly inside me. 

It was dark, but it was filled with old folks like crows on trees which were people watching. I wondered if it were some reason because life was slipping away from them and they were the past looking at the future. 

I didn’t want to grow old, I wanted to somehow let time freeze, I didn’t want any new technology, I wanted to see my hair grow further and still have people into VHS for all I cared. I wanted time to freeze back when I loved Alexa. I could feel her taste, her tongue out, gasping the bed sheets as I licked her folds. I wanted her. I would pound her raw, sometimes until blood, because we both needed it. 

I didn’t know what was happening with me and the street. I knew how people looked at my hair and how I’d get mistaken for a girl with the locks, but I liked it. I knew that men liked it, women as well, not such an extent, but I let it not consume me. I let it out in the wind, if I were on the passenger’s seat, trying to catch raindrops with my mouth and a falling star if I were lucky.

This is a tale of me. 

I should’ve thought of myself and I knew that I was being too selfish, I was too obsessed. I wanted Miles. I saw him with his make up now, how he’d draw those massive silver stripes, as if he were nodding to Michael Stipe’s blue. I saw Miles’ eyeliner and I wanted to lick it. 

“Maybe I should go try women.” She said when I finally picked up the phone back. “It’s not working for us, Alex.”

I could feel her hot breath on the receiver. 

“Maybe we should try how you’re doing.” She sounded hysterical and I wanted to pin her down, tear all her politeness with my teeth, exposing those anorexic bones. I wanted to touch her, I was getting horny, so I came scrolling through old nudes of her on my phone with a shaking hand, as I jerked off, but then I went outside and wondered about getting fucked in the ass as I smoked anyway. 

I wanted her to hold the receiver, so I woke up in my dream naked, on my knees and I was crawling down a spiral staircase and she was down below, once I reached her and she just turned around with her hair shorter, just as I had left her. There was something strong about her, something that would make me roll over and she would straddle me, not even for sex, but just for merely lighting a cigarette and soon Miles walked in, talking to Alexa, who sat on top of me, as my boner appeared and she leaned a bit behind, her hand guiding my cock up and down, telling me to keep it quiet, because she was listening to Miles. 

But she was drop dead gorgeous. She seemed to be the embodiment of what everyone should’ve been with power. She seemed to be some Godlike creature, which made me cum again and again, harshly licking her fingers after every time I would spill onto her long fingers. She was in a plain t-shirt and jeans, but she held it all in her body hands. 

Soon enough Miles closed his mouth, he vanished, stopped talking and Alexa stood up only to walk around me in circles, her shoes’ small heels clicking, and she kept sucking on her finger. Then she took a step back and I was yanked towards her, as if I were handled by a chain. 

She wasn’t mine. 

I woke up with blood in my mouth. 

But in reality my body still longed for men and my thoughts kept drifting to the truck driver for the mere fact that he was the last to touch me and make me feel so damn good. 

Miles seemed too pure for my thoughts now. I was tense and horny. Miles seemed to be glorified, I felt as if I was going down and down the spiral staircase still, naked and wondering where had all my love gone. 

I felt like I was bleeding still even if I had gone to the bathroom at exactly 7:04 am. I felt as if the house was made of paper and I wanted to escape from this paper heteronormativity. I felt like I had an upcoming crisis, where I’d have to weigh an old love waiting for me at the end of the spiral staircase and Miles. 

Miles now seemed to be in a pinstripe suit, pockets in and some buttons unbuttoned as he would sit by a table, drinking from a very tall glass of water as I’d watch him naked. 

I kept bleeding.

“You glorified suicide as a child… Why are you afraid now?” He asked me with eyes as if he were in the headlights and I looked back at the mirror, my teeth all bloodied. 

My parents had no idea of Miles and neither did they have the idea of the trucker. How come he was even part of this story as well? I went outside, down the street and I had left my car and I made my way to a gas station. 

All truckers seemed to look like him and I had wanted them all, to just bend me over, a thick rough cock with no lube and condom. I wanted them to stretch my ass, to make me feel so fucking good that I’d cry while cumming. 

Eventually I waited enough and with a few questions where could I find this Matt trucker, I was in luck, because he’d only be here for a few days, it seemed like everyone I was meeting were getting engraved in my bones and I could feel how deep would their ink run, replacing my blood, my blood filled with love with the colours of the sky and every vein would be filled with stars they’ve all touched upon me. 

I wondered if this was all how the life flashes in front of the eyes, as I was maybe still staring at the blood coming out of my mouth. 

But yet there I was with Matt, he saw me and approached me with plain streetlights above us by the time he had got here. I could see the outline of his cock even through the rough jean fabric. I looked up at him and saw how he had gotten the stubble now, a soft beard and he was looking at me quizzically. I tend to fall in the moment, not for people. I think ahead, of how can I use this when we depart, so that it no longer aches. 

‘Because I love deeply so’ I’d tell Miles, still holding toilet paper to my mouth, wondering now where all my teeth had gone. It wasn’t just a nightmare. It was the end of the weekend. The end of the days, where a Monday would never come because I had said so. Miles kept looking at me, wondering if there was still cum inside me from the trucker and he would go around me in circles now. My love. My lover. I should’ve done so much. 

I closed my eyes and felt my long hair pulled by Matt in his truck, as he thrust deeper, releasing, coating me with his sperm, as I collapsed in the bathroom, blood shiny shiny.


	2. Chapter 2

The greatest thing we found was our love. 

I step over Alex’s no longer bleeding body and see that the landline had been yanked out, with the plug still attached. I look at all the broken glass and wonder how Alex actually did it with his frail body to get a new rose tinted window over the course of staying a few days in this room, spacing his fiancé and myself. Alexa would be here by the end of the day when his body would be picked up like a dying animal and carried away, only he’ll no longer be breathing, and the blood will be forever stuck in the places it touched. The size of the window showed the wrong proportions of it far too heavily, it seemed to be cut to make it fit in, an rather necessary action which seemed to be going through Alex’s head by the looks of it. 

They say that separation is worse than death because it’s easier to just close the lid on the corpse, that the person is gone rather than watching someone leave. 

But… what about Alex?

I don’t know how we will be when I will die, as I see the paramedics take Alex’s dead body with eyes wide open. I don’t even know why they are allowing their hands soak the blood, why no one bothered to close the dead’s eyes. Will I die a different person? Will I forget who he was and fall in love with a memory which will wear out and adapt to my vision of what true love is? I’ll change, and he will forever stay the same, screaming, arguing, curls all over his face and sensible. 

He’ll forever be my love. 

Alexa came back that night after visiting the morgue and I could see that her heart was taken out and the chest stitched back without it. Her hands trembled and we all sat in silence, Nick and Jamie’s children, wives and everyone going out to bed like blinking out stars, leaving Alex’s lovers to confront each other. But we didn’t.

I knew how much Alexa loved him by her glass eyes stare and how she looks like a pretty doll ready to be put back into the box after fair play. But now it’s all gone. Her hair now greasy and tears stuck as salt to her face as she finally looks up, her eyes narrowing down and then she doesn’t even look at the vase of flowers which is between us, as we sit on the dinner table and grabs it with both hands. 

She approaches me and throws the vase at my feet, cutting the shoes, both mine and hers. She can’t speak. The next few days I start hearing talk of how she had lost her voice, how she had made a vow for it to only come back with Alex and that reminds me of the rose-tinted window which makes no sense. 

I get back to it and run my fingers over it, feeling a warmth on the other side. A memory flashes, which is not my own. I see Alex picking up a regular hammer and swinging it at the old window, allowing all the glass to break and fall at his feet, for him to step over and all the shards come flying from the ground up, cutting him up as he barely shudders, reaching some mental nirvana. 

He held his body tight, bones were exposed in different places and that was that. 

That was the story of Alex’s death. 

Which was the beginning. 

I shudder and start banging on the rose-tinted window, Alexa walking behind me, furious. She doesn’t dare to speak, yet she follows me to the gas station to pick up some cigarettes and smoke together, her leg shaking, wrists able to cut paper and glass, as if she was the tool to cut the new window. There is no explanation, for any of us to understand. She blows out the smoke like a birthday candle. 

The night strikes with every star when we get back and I sleep in the room next to Alex’s and I twist and turn. I want to crawl in a ball, because my love wasn’t enough to move him. How is this different from separation? I start thinking of suicidal thoughts which hadn’t crossed my mind since I was a teenager, I want to be with him, but once you cross into the void you never come back. There’s a heavy current in the river of death until we all go underwater and float back up, no memories to be held back and then we live inside them until it becomes a spinning tail end of our lives, and finally we find our final rest, I believe. 

I tried everything to sleep, jerking off to him, jerking off to the stars, but I wanted him back with all the love he had never given me and I knew that Alexa didn’t receive much either, I could still see his mouth moving slowly, as he would recollect the words spoken about her to a mirror in order for me to hear them. I couldn’t stop.  
It was separation.

Death is the ultimate separation when you didn’t know if the lover loved at all. 

I went to the church next day and prayed, only to find steps underneath after the confessional. I climbed into them to reach a crypt. The descriptions didn’t matter, my eyes were filled with water, I would stab my heart if I had wanted to. I went further and further into the rooms of the old city, the church or whatever it was with all the icons looking like they were Russian Orthodox, Catholic, everything… All of them starting with Jesus until they became darker, Jesus no longer wearing a hat and then it all went black, the paintings were now black squares and when I looked back, I could only see dark paintings as well in the form of squares. 

I didn’t even register the priest’s mumble about me sinning, I just widened my eyes. But then if homosexuality were a sin, then so be it. 

I kept walking until it was dark enough for me to see nothing, for my thoughts to be a fiddle which soon enough stopped spinning. 

There is no light at the end of the tunnel, but a carousel. And I see Alexa naked on it, riding in a carriage, her hand held out as if to reach something, but she is merely pointing where should the carousel go… She’s lost him far earlier than I have, and her mind is elsewhere, going in circles and circles. 

I get on the carousel and sit opposite her, feeling uneasy that she’s undressed and soon enough I take off all my clothes as well, running a hand through my hair, noticing how frail we both seem, as if we’ve been walking under the church for a few days now when it was at most twenty minutes. The carousel keeps spinning at a faster speed now and her hand is pointed towards forwards, tears now streaming down her face, she opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. 

I do hear her voice loud and clear in my head, that she’s made a vow to never speak again. She reminds me of Yoko Ono who cut her hair when Lennon died, I guess that’s what she’s aiming for, only for something far stronger and I imagine her silently drinking tea as the years should’ve gone by and looking out of the window, slightly opened, waiting for a lover’s promise which she never even heard so there is nothing to complete. 

Did Alex love her? Of course, but soon enough his love faded… Maybe it went elsewhere or maybe he lied to me when we slept, because I could still feel the worry rush through his bones as we made love. There was something more than a bizarre love triangle, it was a lost queer man who couldn’t fathom his feeling and who went away. 

I knew that there was no point in speaking to a woman who made such a vow. But I still grabbed her hand, so that she would stop pointing and put it down for her light eyes to fill up with sorrow and tears, yank her head down to me and put her legs to her chest, as I held her hand. Then she noticed that I was naked as well, I didn’t even know why. We both weren’t aroused, we were both lost but then maybe we were in a place where the etiquette didn’t apply. Maybe in Hell they really did take the homosexuals? But then… what was Alexa in here for or just going after a burnt lover by someone else’s tongue? We surely weren’t going to Heaven’s pearly gates. 

We spun and that’s when a static noise started to surround us, we were now going below and I looked around, some crosses flashing in the distance before they flipped upside down and a minute later they were gone with Alexa crying, not knowing what she was putting herself through and neither did I know. We were both crazy. We went into… something beyond death. We were after a sinner who simply loved me and was torn. Was that all? Was that all for God to look away? Were we all hay in the haystack with said needle? Was that why the world was so unjust? Was it because God hated us all? And with that thought we stopped at a fast speed, a loud thud and we were there. 

We were in Hell. At the end of the river. Why weren’t there devils to greet us? Was it because everyone’s vision of hell was enough to squeeze into the labyrinth of death? We would walk forever, I was sure of it and a naked Alexa came with me. She wouldn’t take my hand when I offered, because I had always neglected her, even if I know that Alex would make love to a naked Alexa. This was my punishment for going after my bisexual lover. 

I wasn’t going anywhere, whether I found Alex laying on the ground between walls of trees or not. I was here and I realized soon enough that I didn’t even have to breathe. All I had to do was let go and let myself unravel, I could shoot myself in the mouth and taste blood, it was as if I was merging with Alex’s suicidal thoughts. I had no idea how he had died, nothing made sense. 

I felt like the curtain had closed on his empty play and the curtain covered his body just to be taken away from the invisible sight. I had ran in too late. 

Alexa turned around to face me and I could see all the bones on her body. How unhealthy was she? I was scared. I knew that even I had pushed it myself with eating little and exercising, because when you’re told to look a certain way you really do. We fear ourselves, we fear of letting ourselves go and expose ourselves. 

I couldn’t find –

What was it that I couldn’t find?

Oh, right, the courage to dress like Jonathan Rhys Meyer’s interpretation of David Bowie in Velvet Goldmine, but I was trying in and out with make-up, letting myself express, getting scared that it would still leave a thin layer of masculinity, fear of people finding out about my own homosexuality. It was a losing game. 

Alexa knew this and grinned widely, her teeth now sharp.

Maybe she was the devil, naked, standing there in front of me. 

Was she?

What role did she play? Who was she to judge? I couldn’t breathe and I could feel blood pour out of my mouth now, as I pressed my fingers lightly against my lips and her teeth clattering out of cold, but I didn’t dare to give her any of my clothing. At this point I could’ve been naked myself. 

I was just in a thin white t-shirt and jeans, barefoot. 

I was losing. 

I wasn’t going to get Alex, because…

I had eaten glass, broken the mirror, watching Alex slowly fade, not even in my arms. He wasn’t going back. Alexa was the only one left living, if she hadn’t wandered into this labyrinth of hell. But then… what sin had she committed? None. I curled on the ground, feeling the life get sucked and then the carousel was seen in the distance. 

It was getting closer, as Alexa observed me slowly, none of us touching each other. Alexa no longer wanting to ride a horse. 

Had I drunk myself to death? I didn’t know. I could’ve made a deal with the devil for all I knew. I walked towards the carousel again, as it spun faster with every step I took and a lifeless Alex spinning around with it, on the shiny shiny floor. 

He opened his eyes slowly and stood up, watching Alexa behind me. 

His face twisted in the weirdest expressions as if it were frame after frame until it stopped with the spinning carousel,

Because

Once the brain dies,

All memories get erased,

We don’t become one,

We die alone,

We come back alone to the place where we should’ve been and died. 

All activity ceased, all blood gone cold, a mere memory of what never happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go...
> 
> For my other work, and to know why I use AO3, see here: https://graspthesanity.wordpress.com/2019/06/09/why-i-use-ao3/


	3. Chapter 3

They say you’ll go to hell for a beloved.

Through thick and thin. 

Well, we never made those vows. 

I’d trade all my bones to see him again. I ended up having a dream where some scientists were slowly disassembling me, bone by bone, and I couldn’t speak. The voice was all I had left. 

Was I even a widow? How could I be, if were never married? 

I counted every bead around my neck when I stood up in the morning after and I vowed to myself to never speak, as I heard a crash of glass breaking in the living room. It had to be Miles. 

I hurriedly turned to face my own mirror, I knew who I was, and he knew what he had done. 

I closed my eyes with my palms and cried. 

I had no interest. 

Miles could’ve been dead for all I cared. 

They sold ever bone, without me opening my mouth, watching them dissemble my body like a Lego castle and only then, only then I let out my last gasp to feel them grab my skull, every single tooth one by one like breaking a comb apart

That’s when the pain started from that one sole gasp, because 

I had broken my promise

To be gone. 

But I still went out on the streets, I went out on dates and I loved, I told myself that I would love. Not even myself, but the men around me, just like Alex would’ve, just like Miles would’ve. But I never spoke clearly, I never ever went to the labyrinth with Miles. I was a widow who just had seen the other side of death’s coin, the head of the devil. 

And he was queer. 

I lived, I lived, I lived with trench coats, champagne, strawberries, jeans, overalls, drugs, alcohol, movies, solitude, blood, periods, cats, photos, social media, television, computers, engines, museums, money, gold, Birkin bags, Manolo heels, cheap wine on a Sunday night, expensive taste, losing the feeling of self, New Balance, books, comics, fabric, designs, cars, stepping on rain, throwing off balconies, breaking windows with a bat, fixing rose tinted mirrors, seeing my reflection, feeling every bone etched back into my body because the promise was broken, never given a ticket to hell, dyed nails, regrets, abortions, plan Bs, condoms, IUDs, TV meals, fast food, eco-friendly cutlery, nose bleeds, broken faces, gunshots in the air, fireworks, love’s gone parade, noise, mice, nothing else to gain, nothing else to win or not even a mere lottery ticket to be bought in every kiosk of the country, Brexit, wrong awards, judging the right and the wrong, nail varnish, colours of the sky, trailing nails on a man’s back during sex, screaming in agony during an orgasm, broken toenails, clipping of hair falling upon the eyes, pedicure, massages with the wrong men, money, broken cell phones and calls to nowhere with the receiver hanging in a loop around my neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote it quite a while back, but kept it hidden, like a precious gem really xD I hope you enjoyed it! It was really fun to write and go back to my usual dark stuff. 
> 
> For my other work, and to know why I use AO3, see here: https://graspthesanity.wordpress.com/2019/06/09/why-i-use-ao3/

**Author's Note:**

> This took me quite a while to write, but I enjoy eerie stories with all my heart and so I am very pleased to have this done. Originally it was supposed to be a one-shot, but here it is with multiple chapters ahead. Welcome. 
> 
> For my other work, and to know why I use AO3, see here: https://graspthesanity.wordpress.com/2019/06/09/why-i-use-ao3/


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